![](data:image/svg+xml, %3Csvg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' height='64' class='font-weight-bold' style='font: 600 30.11764705882353px "SegoeUI", Arial' width='64'%3E%3Ccircle fill='hsl(128, 8%, 22%)' cx='32' cy='32' r='32' /%3E%3Ctext x='50%25' y='55%25' dominant-baseline='middle' text-anchor='middle' fill='%23FFF' %3EA%3C/text%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Did you, or anyone else, ever resolve this? This [what's left over after digestion] happens to me too frequently, the side effect being that all my desktop apps are shoved to one side of the screen and not restored to original locations when I kill the splitter.
btw, I'm sorry for you frustration, but [the thing that beavers build] I'm glad when I see this stuff happens to other posters. I'm on the autism spectrum, so I'm not sure if you were being trolled by a particular person who kept replying off topic, or if it's an issue with his command of English. His replies are so ridiculously off base, they fail the Turing test.
Assuming the people in the lab are not admins on the machines they are using, one thing I would look for is a Group Policy Object that blocks this misfeature, or that blocks altogether that screen with the tiles that I despise and am thankful it went away in Windows 10 (for the sake of my clients; I'm still in Windows 8.1, arrrrrrgh).